Verizon’s chief Ivan Seidenberg may have gotten a 29 percent pay cut, but he’s still being overpaid by the telephone giant, says a research report.

Seidenberg’s current $16.8 million compensation package is coming under attack in a report from Glass Lewis & Co., a research firm that tracks boardroom integrity.

The company slapped a grade of “D” on the board last week for awarding Seidenberg’s compensation package in 2003, and recommended that institutional shareholders vote for splitting his titles of chairman and CEO at the annual shareholders’ meeting in two weeks.

“It was a very good year for Ivan, but a bad one for Verizon shareholders,” said Kevin Cameron, president of the San Francisco-based activist firm.

“He’s paid at the top of scale for turning in a performance that’s at the bottom of the scale,” said Cameron, noting that the big phone company’s stock has lost nearly 32 percent of its value since it was created three years ago.

“It’s hard to understand how an organization could think of his compensation in that way – it is entirely unjustified,” Thonis said.

Although Glass Lewis criticized Verizon soundly, Cameron saidVerizon has improved some of its pay practices and interlocking directorates.

“Verizon historically has been a rat’s nest of interlocking directors,” said Cameron. “They’ve cleaned up their act in the past two years, yet they still have a long way to go. Any amount of this is bad.”

The report also recommended shareholders withhold votes from five of the 11 directors standing for re-election at the April 28 meeting, citing conflicts of interest.

They included:

* Richard Carrion, CEO-president of Popular Inc., a co-investor with Verizon in a Puerto Rican telephone company.

* Sandra Moose, senior vice president of The Boston Consulting Group which collected $3.5 million in Verizon consulting fees.

Verizon chief Ivan Seidenberg got a D for excessive pay in a report by a research firm tracking broadroom integrity of public companies. Seidenberg got $14.9 million in 2003, but here’s why research says he shouldn’t have:

* His ’03 pay is more than 3 times as much as competitors’ CEOs

* Bad last three years for shareholders – stock price, earnings are down

* Five out of 11 board of director candidates are affiliated with Verizon